Evidence of short-range screening in shock-compressed aluminum plasma

Phys Rev Lett. 2008 Aug 15;101(7):075003. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.075003. Epub 2008 Aug 13.

Abstract

We have investigated the angular variation in elastic x-ray scattering from a dense, laser-shock-compressed aluminum foil. A comparison of the experiment with simulations using an embedded atom potential in a molecular dynamics simulation shows a significantly better agreement than simulations based on an unscreened one-component plasma model. These data illustrate, experimentally, the importance of screening for the dense plasma static structure factor.